Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, November 10, 2016

Official Report 443KB pdf

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Continued Petition

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Game Bird Hunting (Licensing) (PE1615)

Agenda item 4 is consideration of a continued petition, PE1615, on a state regulated system for game bird hunting in Scotland.

I want members to note that we have received correspondence from Tim Baynes, director of the Scottish moorland group, which is part of Scottish Land & Estates, and Dr Colin B Shedden, Scotland director of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, highlighting some of their concerns about the evidence that we received at our previous meeting when we considered the petition and discussed the option of referring it to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee for consideration as part of its scrutiny of the wildlife crime annual report.

Before deciding whether to refer the petition on, we asked the clerks for updates on the anticipated timescales for publication and consideration of that report. Updates have been received, as members will have seen from their papers, so we are now asked to consider what action we wish to take. Do members have any comments on the best way to proceed?

Will you clarify a matter for me, convener? If we refer the petition on to another committee, it will be outwith our control, will it not?

Yes. My view is that it would probably be useful to refer the petition to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and to highlight to it the correspondence that we have received in response to the evidence that we have heard. We can be reassured that, if that committee took evidence, it would do so from all sides of the issue. It would not simply be a matter of the committee having the evidence that we have heard. I am sure that it would want to take evidence from those who have corresponded with us.

You referred to the correspondence that we have received from the Scottish moorland group and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. In the interests of our committee maintaining balance and impartiality, had there not been a suggestion to refer the petition to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, I would have been keen to allow those two bodies to come in and give their side of the argument. It might be helpful—or not—to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee if that were done by this committee in advance of the petition being referred on to it. Obviously, it would be an option for that committee to hear that evidence if it so wished. If that were to be the case, I would be happy to refer the petition to it right away. However, given that our committee has taken evidence from one side of the argument, it would only be fair to take evidence from the other side of the argument.

Do members have views on that?

I agree with Angus MacDonald.

I agree; that makes sense.

I agree. Regulations are in place that can be enacted. Taking account of everything that I have read on the topic, it is really down to the strength of the authorities to implement the regulations and bring people to book.

It is about their ability to do that.

Absolutely. It is not only about the person who has perpetrated the crime being called to justice, but about the landowner being called to justice.

Angus MacDonald is right: if we saw one side of the argument, we need to see the other side.

At least that would allow us to refer a much clearer picture to the other committee.

That does not cut across the timescales that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee has for dealing with the petition, does it?

Not as far as I know, convener.

Clearly, the committee has taken a view. Either way, we see the petition going to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. In order for us to ensure fairness and balance, which is very much the feeling that comes out of the correspondence, there should be an opportunity for the Public Petitions Committee to hear the other evidence. Once we have done that, we can refer the petition on. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. That ends the public part of the meeting, and I ask that members of the public leave to allow the committee to move into private session.

10:39 Meeting continued in private until 11:13.